Hey, remember when we optimistically reported on the Collective awhile back?
Well the program has officially launched today, and you can vote on the projects at Square-Enix’s website here.
So, no one is quite sure what the Collective is going to do for developers yet. As of right now it seems to be adding a middle man, people voting on if a game can even move on to the crowdfunding phase, and if Square-Enix will give them a big thumbs up or a thumbs down before that developer’s campaign launches on IndieGoGo.
The games up right now include Moon Hunters by Kitfox, touting itself as a randomly generated open world adventure. Game of Glens by Ruffian Games where you play as a Scottish Clan in resource gathering, structure building and projectile combat. Finally there’s World War Machine by Tuque Games, an action RPG where you play as a post-apocalypse roaming mech that needs to scrap together its own parts.
Square-Enix does seem to be promising its support for successfully funded campaigns through the development and distribution phases, though it’s unclear what that actually means. It’s free to submit a project to the Collective, which will then go through an evaluation period before being launched to the public. Square-Enix seems to want to make it an honest effort here, going as far as offering developer feedback if for some reason a project doesn’t move past their “Due Diligence” phase after surviving the private and public evaluation rounds.
The most interesting little twist on this however is that we could be seeing a few more Eidos IPs appearing on the Collective. Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Tomb Raider already having successful (depending on who you ask) relaunches, with Thief around the corner and a mockery of the Legacy of Kain series called Nosgoth. So what does that mean? Does that mean the Collective will give us a chance to fund a new Urban Chaos? Or even better! Daikatana! We have at least been told Fear Effect, Gex and Anachronix have a real chance of appearing on the Collective site…
If nothing else it will be interesting to watch how the Collective unfolds, with the first 28 days of voting open now. What the Publisher/Developer interface looks like, and whether backers actually care that a large publisher is throwing their weight behind a crowdfunding campaign.
